Archive for December 28th, 2005

Credit to Bob Barr for Consistency

Posted December 28, 2005 By Dave Thomer

I was not a huge fan of Bob Barr during the Clinton impeachment. I disagreed with the case that he was making and I often disagreed with the way he made it. I have little doubt that my feelings were influenced by the belief that the process of investigations that led to the impeachment was a highly partisan affair. So I have to give Barr considerable credit, because it looks like he is applying the same standards to George W. Bush that he did to Bill Clinton. That’s very clear in this editorial from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he writes:

First, in the best tradition of former President Bill Clinton’s classic, “it-all-depends-on-what-the-meaning-of-is-is” defense, President Bush responded to a question at a White House news conference about what now appears to be a clear violation of federal electronic monitoring laws by trying to argue that he had not ordered the National Security Agency to “monitor” phone and e-mail communications of American citizens without court order; he had merely ordered them to “detect” improper communications.

This example of presidential phrase parsing was followed quickly by the president’s press secretary, Scott McLellan, dead-panning to reporters that when Bush said a couple of years ago that he would never allow the NSA to monitor Americans without a court order, what he really meant was something different than what he actually said. If McLellan’s last name had been McCurry, and the topic an illicit relationship with a White House intern rather than illegal spying on American citizens, I could have easily been listening to a White House news conference at the height of the Clinton impeachment scandal.

On foreign policy, domestic issues, relationships with Congress, and even their selection of White House Christmas cards and china patterns, presidents are as different as night and day. But when caught with a hand in the cookie jar and their survival called into question, administrations circle the wagons, fall back on time-worn but often effective defense mechanisms, and seamlessly morph into one another.

A level of consistency is a vital thing if we’re going to have a democratic society. It is much easier to have a healthy difference of beliefs if we have confidence that the other person truly believes what he is arguing, and a very good way to establish that is to know that the person will follow that belief to its reasonable conclusions even in different circumstances. This is not to say that we won’t ever get fuzzy around the edges and be inconsistent from time to time. And it doesn’t mean that beliefs have a one-size-fits-all application – it can be very possible that different responses are justified by the specific characteristics of superficially similar situations. But I think a lot of public officials could take a lesson from Bob Barr right now.

Filed in Public Policy

Blogging Bioethics

Posted December 28, 2005 By Dave Thomer

When I was an undergraduate and decided to major in philosophy, the department advisor asked me what I was planning to do with my future. The answer I gave bore very little resemblance to how the next ten-plus years of my life would go. Regardless, he was honest with me about the employment prospects, and lack thereof, in the field, and suggested that I strongly consider bioethics. Given the rapid change in medical science and technology, people who could help companies and governments frame and consider the ethical questions raised by new advances would most likely find themselves in demand even outside the traditional academic world. Over a decade later, it’s hard to argue with him. Prescient as he was, I wonder if he ever envisioned the blog.bioethics.net, the blog of the editors of the American Journal of Bioethics. The editors demonstrate how demanding the field is – it requires not just an ability to think deeply and critically about ethical questions, but it requires keeping up with numerous scientific disciplines and understanding the goings-on well enough to relate the questions to the research. The blog is some fascinating reading.

It’s not surprising that a major focus for the blog over the last few weeks has been the controversy over the South Korean stem cell research program, which has been rocked by an escalating seris of ethical challenges. When I first started checking out the blog, the major concern was the issue of informed consent – were the people who donated eggs to the experiments able to fully understand what they were being asked to do, and were they in a position to say no? I’ve learned in my readings on Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments that informed consent all by itself is a blockbuster issue for scientific ethics. But that was only the beginning in this case, because it is coming to light that many of the results for which the South Korean team was so celebrated were fabricated. The issue hit the mainstream press a few days ago; the Philadelphia Inquirer covered it right before Christmas.

The bioethics blog has an interesting take on the controversy. In addition to commenting on the immediate issues of honesty and proper conduct, they are pointing out that United States researchers and regulators have very little ability to influence how stem cell research is conducted because they are not allow to work on any embryonic stem cells developed after August 2001. I find it a fairly compelling argument, even though I’m under no illusions that the American regulatory system is working on all cylinders lately. But I’m predisposed to agree with criticism of the research ban in the first place. If I weren’t, I doubt I’d be convinced by an argument that we should do something I think is immoral just because people in other countries are going to do it in an even more immoral fashion. Actually, when I put it that way, it kind of sounds like some of the justifications I’ve heard for torturing prisoners and violating their civil liberties, and I know I don’t find them persuasive.

Filed in Philosophy